Contact centers are typically busy places where service agents interact with customer calls over a variety of channels, including, but not necessarily limited to: chats, emails, and so forth, while supervisors monitor their progress and manage the volume of issues coming in across all channels. It is important for the work of service agents to be monitored carefully and to be strategically thought-out, since every interaction with a customer costs the business money. Service agents can be co-located together with their supervisor. Service agents can also work as remote employees, a model which is becoming more commonplace as costs are often lower.
Although contact center supervisors serve a managerial role, they often function as mentors, motivators, managers, as well as service agents, in a task requiring supervisors to function as multitaskers as well. They often lead teams of 10-20 agents, and must manage volume across all service channels that are coming into the contact center. At any point, supervisors can be called upon to manage and coach agents, handle tough customers, adjust staff, prepare reports for management, all while ensuring service level and quality objectives are maintained.
Traditionally, supervisors monitor how agents are performing at their jobs to make sure they are productive and working efficiently on all the issues coming in. This often includes looking to standard call center metrics such as an agent's average handle time (AHT) or average speed to answer (ASA), but there is a host of other data the supervisor can look into to get a sense of an agent's workload and performance. Supervisors often walk around the floor to get a sense for how things are going by watching the agents and listening to conversations, while maintaining visibility for agents to ask them questions as well. However, it can be difficult to get that same feel for how an agent is doing when the supervisor or agent is remote.